The Archivio Storico 'de Propaganda Fide' contains a rich collection of documents related to Christianity in China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including a significant number of Chinese documents. Given the recent interest in Chinese Christianity, and the fact that a number of the Chinese texts in the Archivio Storico are unique texts, there is a need for a catalogue of these documents to be used by the academic community.

Purpose

The purpose of this joint project is to establish and publish a catalogue of the Chinese documents related to Christianity in China (1622-1830), so as to preserve this cultural heritage better and make it known to the scholarly world. In a next phase one can consider to reprint some of the documents in the catalogue.

Implementation

K.U. Leuven will sent Dr. Ad Dudink to Rome for a period of three months (15th January 2011 – 15th April 2011) for preparing a scientific catalogue of the collection. Dr. Dudink is an experienced bibliographer, who has already compiled several catalogues of collections concerning books related to the Cultural Exchange between China and Europe in the Late Ming and Early Qing Period (see Documentation). The added value is that the collection of Archivio Storico 'de Propaganda Fide' can immediately be compared and related to other similarly important collections in the world: Paris (BnF), Rome (ARSI, BVE, Vat), St. Petersburg, etc. as included in the Christian Chinese Texts (CCT) bibliographical database of Sinology K.U. Leuven.

Output of the project and date for publicationEstimated date for publication in the form of a catalogue: December 2012